Almost Everything in This 1930s Flat Was Custom-Designed by Its Owner

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Project Details:

Location: Poznan, Poland

Architect: Wiercinski-Studio / @wiercinskistudio

Footprint: 960 square feet

Photographer: ONI Studio / @onistories

From the Architect: "Author’s Apartment was designed by architect Adam Wiercinski for himself. From the outset, he focused on complete design, complementing the space with custom furniture, architectural elements, and details that affect the character of the place. These are a single series of objects made in cooperation with local craftsmen from honest materials such as steel, wood, and stone. Working on different scales, from small lamps to buildings, allows him to better experience and understand space. This was the case when he designed and renovated this apartment in a tenement house from 1932.

"First, old elements such as wooden floors and solid doors with deep frames were restored. The function was rearranged between the existing structural walls so that the kitchen was part of the open living space and a place to gather. Minimizing interference resulted in a brighter corridor. 

"Bright, natural floors and neutral white walls serve as a background for original furnishings, supplemented with several inherited elements. The apartment is filled with forty objects designed by Adam. The original furniture creates a coherent interior space. Adam mainly used steel in various profiles and finishes, from raw to painted or waxed. The designed elements are characterized by modesty, simplicity, and proportional treatments drawn from architectural experience. The visible, intersecting structure is often supplemented with solid wood, glass, and natural stone. These are the features that define Adam’s constantly developing design language. In this project, the use of boards, which are typically used by carpenters, was abandoned. The wood appears here in the form of solid, natural, and waxed oak and black oiled plywood. These materials, together with steel, stone, linen, or ceramic tiles, are honest in their simplicity and show the beauty of the material used in cross-section. This is a project based on combining individual elements into an original, coherent and calm whole. Almost everything was designed here, from large furniture and partition walls containing a wardrobe to smaller details.

"The kitchen furniture is a steel frame raised above the historic parquet floor, divided into square modules. The division of the kitchen into squares makes it non-standard and deviates from the typical kitchen by creating a large piece of furniture that fits the room. The steel partition in the corridor, which has a wardrobe, lets in daylight between two opposite areas of the apartment. Another wall separates the bathroom. The culmination of the corridor, already in the bedroom, is another frame filled with plywood, which visually closes the space of the wardrobe. This place also consists of designed pipes and shelves covered with linen. 

"The following were designed in this apartment: a table with a flower plate; coffee tables; a sofa; an oak shelf on one leg; a series of stools/mirrors, lamps that combine Polish glasswork with Adam’s steel structures; shelves; curtain rods; neon installations; and even small details such as covers for damaged doors around locks or buttons in the toilet.

"In addition to Adam’s elements, there are several inherited antique furniture pieces in the apartment. Some of them have been modified, including a wooden chest of drawers belonging to Adam’s grandmother that now has a steel base, and an original Danish ceiling lamp that’s now a floor lamp thanks to a new steel structure. Each of the elements has its own story to tell, but all of them were created at the same time and create a story. This apartment has become a space for Adam to test furniture and details."